Am I the only one???

[Princess Glenda]

YES, we are like you. Our May trip this year was for 12 nights. We spent 4 FULL (and I mean FULL) days at the Parks were we didn't leave and even hopped to MK after AK closed. One other day we went to Epcot around 4 and stayed until 11 pm. We felt like we had "wasted" hours that day. When we are at the parks we are AT the parks and give them 100%. Then we alternate and have non-park RESORT/rest days. This works great for us--the best of both worlds. We had 10 day non-expiring tickets this trip and only used 5 park admissions on our 12 night visit. It justs make sense for us money wise to use fewer admissions and to stay longer hours on days that we go to the parks. I'm just not a "let's go to MK for a couple of hours" gal!!

 

[mill4023]

We made our first WDW trip this past May. I planned on some afternoon breaks, but never did take any. With 4 kids and 2 strollers, the thought of dragging everyone back to the room then having to drag everyone back to the parks sounded like a lot more work than just sitting down for awhile and resting while having lunch or a snack. The way I see it, the walk back to the car or the hassle of taking strollers on a bus would be too much extra work and would negate any rest we'd get at the hotel. Now if I was staying at a monorail resort, I might consider an afternoon break while at MK. It also might be different if we had been there many times. We were trying to fit a lot of stuff in and didn't want to waste 4 hours for a 2 hour break at the hotel.

For our next trip, I'm planning 11 nights instead of the 9 we had last time just so we can have a couple more rest days or half days planned.

 

[maxaroni]

This will be our first year to actually take that break. We'll see how it works out. In the past, we are in the park all day long until dinner time. After dinner, if that park isn't open late, it's EPCOT, as someone else said. This year, we decided we needed to be a bit more relaxed as we have lots of stress going on right now.

 

[Disneyrsh]

As one of the 'pro-break' posters, I have to add that we have a few things that make it easier, we have AP's so the pressure to wring every last dollar out of the day is lessened.

We definitely feel the pressure to stay in the parks when we use hoppers (one of the reasons we eventually went to AP's-stress reducer!), and we drive down to disney so getting in the car and going to the hotel is about 20 minutes from when we decide to call it a morning to when we walk in the door of the hotel.

We usually get to the parks before they open in the morning so we have a primo parking spot.

We've sort of streamlined our vacation technique, over the years, to best suit us. We know I have to eat early or I get grumpy: "Feeding The Dragon" my husband and kids call it, we know that we need a nap midafternoon or my husband will turn into a pumpkin around 7 that night (funny, no cute nickname for that behavior!), and we know that we really like having our car with us.

Soooo, I guess it's all how you approach Disney, for us, it's how do we end up maximally relaxed, tan, exercised, sleekly plump from the food, and satisfied that we got to see everything we wanted? It's all a balancing act, each element is different piece of the pie for everybody...

ummm, pie...

 

[Disneyrsh]

I have to add that when we vacation with my dad it drives him NUTS that we take a break during the day. He's an open to close Disney Nut. the man is a machine!

And doesnt 'going commando' mean you're not wearing any underwear? (Joey on Friends)

 

[brer rabbit 28]

we stay all day too.We travel over from uk for 14 days.Get to the parks early and stay there all day.Sometimes we park hop but i just wouldn't be able to leave for a nap.Mum (52) and me (29) get so excited about our holiday that we don't want to waste a second!

 

[bigbabyblues]

We start at a park at opening (most days a character breakfast before opening), return to our resort around lunchtime for a swim/nap, then go to another park, or the same one, until closing.

My boys need their afternoon naps (4 and 2), and the little one will not sleep in a stroller, tried that last year, didn't work. They both nap for 3 to 3-1/2 hours at a time. The 4-yo walks the entire time, we don't even use a stroller for him. DH and I also enjoy the swim and sometimes need the nap. It's a good time to shower and change too, we went at the end of Sept last year and it was HOT.

 

[jjan]

I think that a big difference is what time of year that you are going. We went in December and went commando from morning to night and you would have had to pull us kicking and screaming from the parks... this was also the case in May. Then we went in June and experienced a tiny slice of the heat and humidity and the afternoon thunderstorms which can really be miserable I think. Sometimes it would only kind of rain, so you put on a poncho, but then it would stop so you are waiting for it to get worse and it didn't and people wouldn't get discouraged and leave the parks like I wanted them to and it was just hot hot hot and humid and sticky especially with a poncho on. Then there were days that it rained so hard that you thought that you could drown while walking down the street. It was a real eye opener during the heat and humidity, to see how other guests around us behaved. Parents just screaming at their kids (and I mean like they want to actually kill their kids), grumpy people etc. You can only take that so long before you say enough. The pool at the hotel sounds better and better during times like that. After we came back from our June trip, I completely redid our itinerary for August and plan to only make it until early afternoon and then chill out until our nice TS dinner and then if we want to catch a night show/fireworks great, if not it will be the pool for us.

 

[AnaheimGirl]

We're going to play it by ear this trip. But generally, we're the "stay all day" type, although I'd hardly call it "commando"... that makes it sound difficult or stressful or something.

Having grown up close to DL, we always got there first thing in the morning and stayed till closing. There was no afternoon rest option, so that just seems like the way it's "supposed to" be done, to me, and doesn't seem like too much at all. Now, doing that every day for a week, yes, that would probably get a little tiring, so I imagine we'll have a few full park days, and other days where we go back to the hotel and rest, perhaps a no-park day, too. It depends on how we feel that day. Dh and I have already said we may take turns taking the 2yo back to the hotel for a nap, while the other stays with our 7yo. We'll see what happens when we're there.

 

[purplern]

I like to stay in one park till it closes or we have done everything we want too. Once we are there we dont leave.

 

[mommykds]

Wow there are alot of people who do their whole day at the parks..ok I feel better now.

 

[Adrienne]

Even with my chronic fatigue i'm a open to close girl , when u come from so far away like we do and save for so long to do the big trip from Australia to the US of A (or the United states of Disney as we call it around here) i like to drink in the atmosphere. The fact that when i get jet lagged i can't sleep at all seems to help with the whole be up early and do the parks thing (used this theory twice in Cali at DLR and it was fantastic both times. Can't wait to do WDW to the full extent that i can, even if it means renting a wheelhair or ECV so that my fatigue doesn't get too bad.

Adrienne

 

[Kilted_Yank]

We do it comando style too.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry, I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I read that!

As for us, we have been going to WDW annually (sometimes 2x annually) since our little one was 9 months old. When she was really small she would nap in her stroller. These days the stroller is gone (she is nearing 7) and we don't take midday breaks at the hotel.

In the summer, we normally don't get to the parks until midday anyway, since my wife and daughter prefer to swim in the morning (while I workout or cook). Once we get to the parks we tend to stay until the evening (or closing if it is EPCOT.

We will be heading back in just over 30 days (looking forward to seeing you again, Sammie G!) and are all jazzed up about it.

 

[Thea]

We have been to the WDW 9 times now since 1996 and we have found that our dayly gameplan has changed a lot. The first 2 years we went commando and stayed in the parks all day long - We did find though that we missed a lot of the late night action simply because we had left around 8 or 9 pm simply too exhausted to carry on.

For the next many years we did the park,swim,nap,park scedule. It worked for us. We were out of the midday sun (Hard on us Scandinavians) and had more energy. It also had the advantage of giving the kids a break from the sensory overload of the parks.

Lately we have been using yet another stategy. We are now AP holders and take it more relaxed. We still primarily go early/late but now we also mix in other activities. Before if we went for 14 days, 8 would be Disney days, 2 would be shopping and 4 would be other activities (Beach, Universal, KSC)

Now we do a lot of half days -
Disney morning/Afternoon shopping/evening DTD
or
KSC morning/afternoon and Disney night.

DH mentioned last time that he thought that we have never gotten so much done, and at the same time had such a relaxing vacation


Thea
Only 3 more days...

 

[DisFlan]

We stopped doing one-park-all-day and/or commando about 20 years ago! The burnout after day 2 or 3 wasn't worth it.

We go to a park during the day, maybe hop to another for a while, then go back and rest at the resort. Then we go to dinner and one, or even two, of the parks for evening stuff. We're lucky in that BWV is only a few minutes walk from two parks. It's easy to go back and forth. We can do Fantasmic AND Illuminations with very little effort - just hop on a boat.

DisFlan

 

[YesI'mObsessed]

We learned by day 3 that the whole "go and rest" routine was not for us. Once we went back to the room, we were so tired, we didn't want to go back out! On day 2 my dd took a long nap during the day and was up all night. So I decided to take her outside to run a little. Well, I felt like such a loser. There was a whole world out there we were missing. There were people everywhere, walking talking, having fun. We were inside, sleeping. On day 3 we had CRT at 8:30 and we didn't come back until after Illuminations at 10:00. From then on, I decided....we sleep when we get home!

 

[mill4023]

We stopped doing one-park-all-day and/or commando about 20 years ago! The burnout after day 2 or 3 wasn't worth it.

This is definitely true. We've done 3 days in a row and we were exhausted. So I understand why a lot of people like to take afternoon breaks. The difference for me is that I just don't see going back to the resort, then back to the park again as being very restful. Maybe it's just me, but getting 4 kids and 2 strollers from point A to point B, whether it's by car or bus, is stressful and tiring enough that it's not worth any rest we would get.

For us, the best plan would be to have rest days instead of afternoon breaks. Our last trip was 9 nights and included 5 disney park days, 1 sea world day, and 1 universal day. I'm planning 11 nights for our next trip just so we can have more rest days.

 

[nanalisa]

And doesnt 'going commando' mean you're not wearing any underwear? (Joey on Friends)[/QUOTE]

Yes, but at Disney it means staying at the park all day without wearing underwear!


The beauty of staying onsite is that you can go back to your room easily if you want to. Being there is July means the parks are crowded and hot so it just depends on our level of grouchiness and perspiration whether we stay all day or take a break. Last trip we went four days in a row from sun up to sun down and it wore our dgd and DH to a frazzle. They slept from 4:00 pm to 8:00 am the next day. I woke them briefly for water but that was it. We aren't doing that again.

 

[Amy&Dan]

It depends on a lot of factors for us actually. If it is off season, crowds are low and hours are short we go from opening to closing. We can be park commandos with the best of them if the crowds are such that we are actually riding or seeing shows/parades. If the crowds are horrible on the other hand we do take a break and swim, go to DTD or the arcade. Then back to the parks for fireworks and rides as the crowds die down. All of these same factors figure in to what type resort we stay at as well. If the crowds are predicted to be bad we will stay at a moderate since we know we will spend more time swimming and want the extra amentities. If we know we will be at the parks non stop then we might as well save money and stay at a value. Although now we are DVC so I guess that doens't factor in anymore after all! One thing is for sure, as we take more trips to Disneyland/WDW we know we have seen it already or will see it again so we don't have that "need" to do it all we used to.

 

[pouty_tink]

Once I am in the parks.. im there til they kick me out!
If they never closed, well I probably wouldnt leave. I agree with the others that said it seems more stressfull to go wait in line for a bus ride back to the hotel, and then again back to the parks.. If we need a rest we sit down and people watch or find a good show to sit through. Then again it is just my DH and I. Thats the good thing about going in Sept/Oct though I think.. parks are less crowded temps arent quite as bad and while yea they may close earlier, you dont feel as if you are missing something by not being inside the parks and doing something else.. If I wanted to sit around the pool and relax or nap, I wouldnt spend the $$$ on a WDW vacation. But hey, everyone vacations their own way, talk to me when I have kids and go, I may sing another tune